MEMBER STORY
before I ever got to the teaching side of the equation,” says Ed. “As a CPA you have to be used to that. Take whatever is in front of you — however messy, mixed up and crazy it may be — clients still need to have something explained to them today. It helps dramatically to anticipate where the questions and problems are going to come from,” he adds. And it helps to do your homework. “Clients in Arizona know things about California. That’s why New Jersey practitioners better have some knowledge of what’s happening in New York.”
All in a Very Long Day’s Work BY KATHLEEN HOFFELDER, NJCPA SENIOR CONTENT EDITOR
CPAs routinely ask Edward K. Zollars, CPA, tax and technology partner at Thomas, Zollars & Lynch, Ltd. of Phoenix, Arizona, and all-around tax sage, about everything from capital accounts in partnerships to unemployment relief and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness. But the question they really want to ask him is, “do you ever sleep?” While the answer is decidedly “yes,” most would argue the validity of that given the quantity of carefully crafted responses he churns out daily to CPAs on both sides of the United States. As a member of the New Jersey Society of CPAs, the Arizona Society of CPAs (ASCPA) and the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), Ed takes it upon himself to respond to numerous complicated tax queries in the form of emails, member forum responses and calls. Since joining the NJCPA in July of 2018, Ed has posted more than 1,700 times to its Connect
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Open Forum, which has actually helped boost membership at the Society. At the ASCPA, Ed was the driving force behind Arizona’s roll out of their first member discussion group, the predecessor to their current Connect system. Throughout the years, he has also contributed to other CPA societies, such as the California Society of CPAs’ CalCPA Yahoo Groups, its TaxTalk and a tax news group. Others know Ed as the over-subscribed lecturer for the accounting continuing education program at Kaplan Financial Education (the Loscalzo Institute) and frequent contributor to Kaplan’s Current Federal Tax Developments website. As teaching became increasingly more natural to him, Ed acknowledges, “I had no intention to build that classroom skill; it indirectly kept happening.” So where did he hone such skills? From working with his clients, of course. “Clients have been doing that to me for years,
MIXING IN TECH A native of Phoenix, Ed says he’s “always been down here in the desert.” Though he does not come from a long line of accountants, the desire to help people does run in his family as his brother, Jack, is in law enforcement in Phoenix. Ed’s technology skills, however, could have come from his father, who was among some of the earliest IT professionals dating back to the 1950s. Along with accounting, Ed pursued his interest in technology while attending Arizona State University. From there he worked to update the technology at Thomas, Zollars & Lynch, which ultimately led to him being recognized by the AICPA for his tech skills. While in charge of technology at his firm, he supported lots of software. That led to becoming involved with WordStar, the word processing program on CompuServe, where he became a moderator and a systems operator. In the early 1990s, the AICPA launched their own forum on CompuServe and asked him to work the moderation software for the forum and to become a systems operator for them. He subsequently was appointed to technology panels and became a regular speaker at many state CPA societies, including the NJCPA. Outside of helping CPAs, Ed also assists his local church, the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Phoenix, with what else? Accounting and technological assistance. He served for years as the financial secretary and continues to assist the current financial secretary with production work to run a podcast with the week’s sermon each Sunday.
